Damage
by Maid Malcolm
Summary: The Team go to the beach. Bart is forced to confront the physical and mental scars of his old life.


Even without the Cave, there was still the beach. And there was still summer.

Nightwing called the Team together for what he insisted was a training session. "Swimming and water movement training," he explained, gesturing the waves behind him. "Hand-eye coordination." That was accompanied by a volleyball thrown straight into Conner's chest. With grins of delight, the Team branched out; the Bats and Cassie teamed up against Karen, Mal, Conner and M'Gann (cracking her first smile in over a week) for a round of volleyball; Gar and Wolf began a bizarre game of tag without any obviously consistent rules; and La'gaan and Jaime headed straight for the water.

Bart watched them.

The idea of leisure was... well, every culture had leisure, even his, but he still couldn't quite grasp the reckless abandon that the Team showed. There was no wariness. No lookout. Nobody glanced about for some random task to dive into if they should be interrupted. Bart had finally started sleeping through the night without waking every time Mrs Garrett's footsteps moved past his room, but he couldn't just stand on an open beach without any anxiety. The civvies didn't help. Bart hadn't worn civvies around the Team very much. He tried not to wear them at all if he could help it. They made it hard to stay in character. And in a long-sleeved grey shirt and dark pants at the beach, he felt very, very out of place.

"Hey, Bart! Come in, the water's great!" Jaime's voice snapped him out of his reverie. It was impossible to ignore that voice; Jaime was his friend, the first friend he'd made in a world where social ties weren't a trade-off of shaky alliances for food and security, and even though it sounded nothing like it, it was also the voice that meant fear and power in his own time, that needed to be listened to _right now_ if there was any chance of survival. He'd mostly gotten over that. Well, he'd mostly gotten over the urge to run whenever Jaime spoke to him, at least.

Bart could strip down and join his friend in the water. He could relax and have fun instead of loitering awkwardly on the shore.

No. No he couldn't.

"I don't do water if I can help it," Bart called back with a dismissive wave. "I'm pretty crash right here." He laid back on the sand and pretended to relax.

"Come on, _hermano_, you can totally swim." Jaime walked up onto the shore. Like everyone else, he was in swimmers; board shorts, in his case. He barely seemed to notice the alien robot clinging to his back, so small and delicate-looking. Bart wondered how heavy it was. Did it take much adjustment, to walk and run and swim with such a burden as if it wasn't even there? Did he even feel it any more?

"Can, yes. Just won't." Bart grinned and pulled on a pair of sunglasses. "Some other time, eh?"

"Come on, La'gaan's challenged us to a swimming race and you can totally beat him with superspeed!"

"I look forward to the challenge, Chum!" La'gaan called from the water.

Bart forced himself to stay calm. He didn't have to get up and do whatever Blue Beetle said. That wasn't Jaime's intention. Blue Beetle didn't give orders any more... yet, Blue Beetle didn't give orders yet. "Come on, I'm sure your armour can take him."

"Maybe, but – "

"Why are you pushing this? I said no!" Bart stormed off up the beach and into the change rooms, keeping to normal human speeds by sheer habit. He should suit up. Be Impulse. Run.

_You're Impulse. You're not some helpless slave. You have a job to do but you have freedom. Blue Beetle isn't ordering you around, isn't threatening and intimidating you. That's just you memory talking. Calm down. You're Impulse._

The change room was a dark, windowless concrete cell, typical of such buildings. Bart didn't put on the light. He just leaned against a wall and took a deep, calming breath.

"_Hermano_?"

Even as a quiet, gentle near-whisper, Jaime's voice couldn't be ignored. Bart's eyes automatically shot open and found Jaime standing uncertainly in the doorway, half-illuminated by sunlight.

"Bart? Are you alright?"

"Yeah."

Jaime crossed his arms. "You're clearly not."

"It's not important."

"If you don't want to talk about it, I can leave. But... if I said anything to upset you..."

"It isn't you." _Yet_. "It's..." Bart found himself running his arms down his own sleeves, and made a snap decision. Jaime needed to understand. Bart wasn't sure that Jaime really believed in Blue Beetle, not completely. Everything he'd told him was just... words. And nobody else knew what the future held. There was nobody else to tell. "Come here. And get the light on your way over." He ditched the glasses and, in one smooth movement, pulled off his shirt.

Bart was careful not to look at Jaime for a few seconds. He wanted to give him time to recover. He didn't want to see the shock in his eyes as he took in the riddled network of scars patterning his torso.

"What happened?" Jaime asked eventually.

Bart ran his hand over his right shoulder and upper arm, tracing the lumpy stripe of flesh. "Wire. I was four, I was trying to avoid rockslides climbing a mountain. We were in a rush building something, I forget what, and it really didn't do to be the slowest. I tripped into a badly maintained fence." He moved to a less obvious scar almost directly behind it, a straight burn scar. "Electric fence. Another kid pushed me into it. The shelters were overcrowded and we were fighting over somewhere to sleep out of the rain."

Without seeming to realise what he was doing, Jaime reached over and brushed the scar with his own fingers. "That looks painful."

Bart shrugged. "It looks painful because it's external. The pain of the shock collar was worse, and felt a lot more often. He tipped his head up, baring his throat. "No scars for those. The damage is internal." He turned around, exposing his back. The scars there were long, straight. They were hard to count, but Bart knew that there had been exactly thirty original wounds. "Whipped for stealing food. Whipping was pretty rare, what with the collars. It was meant to leave lasting pain and scars, and it was meant to risk painful death through infection or shock. Stealing food was a serious offense. I was helpless for a week; my friends had to guard me and fight for resources to treat the wounds."

"And did you steal – "

"Yes, I did. And yes, it was worth it." He turned around again, took Jaime's hand and pressed it against his stomach where the flesh was puckered and knotted. "This wasn't a very bad cut. But it got infected. I didn't have the proper stuff to treat it."

"I didn't... I didn't know." Jaime looked up and caught sight of the burn on Bart's left arm, stretching from his shoulder almost to his elbow. "What about that?"

Bart smiled sadly. "Edge of a plasma cannon blast, wide dispersal, 25% power."

Jaime looked blank for a moment. Then it clicked. He stared disbelievingly at his own hands. "Wait, you mean... _I_ did...?"

"Not yet." Bart reached for his shirt before Jaime could notice any other scars. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have shown you this." _But I haven't, really. You can't see where my ribs were broken, where my thigh was burned, where part of my toe is missing. That's why I picked a costume that covers so much skin. _"

Jaime grabbed his arms before he could pull the shirt on. "Yes, you should have. And I should've guessed that... this sort of thing had happened to you. I'm afraid I don't... I still don't entirely understand what happened to you." He bit his lip, and Bart felt Jaime's hand clench tighter on his arms. "What I did to you."

"You haven't."

"Yet." His eyes skimmed Bart's torso, dancing from scar to scar. Bart felt himself blushing. He pulled away and pulled his shirt on, covering the scars. "And I won't."

"I know." Showing him had been the wrong decision. All that time hiding himself, concealing physical scars with fabric and mental scars with a smile, and he'd pulled both masks away for the last person he should trust, who was looking at him as if he was damaged, useless goods. Which he was. Every scar was a testament to his flaws. Weak. Disobedient. Damaged. Ugly.

Jaime was carefully trying to keep his face blank, but Bart could see the shock and... disgust? Pity? He could be imagining it. Probably not. He was deserving of both those reactions.

"I'm going home," Bart said. "Have fun at the beach."

"Don't go."

"Why not?"

"Because we're at the beach and you deserve to have a good time."

"I'm not taking my shirt off around them."

"Then don't. Lounge on the sand and eat sausages. I was wrong to push you to do anything else."

Bart nodded and tugged at his shirt, making sure it covered his whole torso. Jaime watched him, biting his lip.

"You know," Jaime said thoughtfully as Bart straightened his sleeves and reached for his sunglasses, "My grandfather is a carver. It's just a hobby, really; he carves little trinkets out of wood and sells them for a few dollars to tourists. When I was five, we were visiting, and I brought him a bit of wood I'd found and asked him to carve me a puppy. He frowned and said, 'I'll try.' I asked what he meant by that, and he said that what he could make was limited by the knots and cracks in the wood. This bothered me a little. I vowed to find him the most perfect piece of wood so that he could make my perfect puppy." Jaime sighed. "He laughed at me. He said that from the tug of gravity to the bite of an axe, there was no such thing as a piece of wood without scars. He told me that every piece of wood was perfect at being what it was, and that it was the scars that told the carver what the wood was supposed to be."

They headed out into the sunlight. "I guess everything has limits," Bart agreed.

"No, see, that's what I thought too; I thought he was talking about limits, telling me why he couldn't do something. I said he was a really great carver and he could make the wood into anything. He said a bad carver can make wood into anything. A good carver listens to the wood before he decides for sure what shape it should be. He said if he made a puppy out of wood that wasn't meant to take that shape, it would be weak and poorly coloured and imperfect. And it wasn't the wood's fault, the wood was good and strong. It was ours for forcing the wrong perspective on it and shaping it wrong, robbing it of a perfect shape. It was perspective that made something a weakness or strength." Jaime smiled wistfully. "Then he took both my hands and said 'Remember, _nieto_, you shape your own life, so make sure you know who you are'. And a day later he handed me my carving."

"Was it the puppy you wanted?"

"Does it matter? It was perfect and I loved it. Oh, hey, they've started cooking!" Jaime quickened his pace. Bart watched him pull ahead.

Scars had certainly made Bart who he was. A burn for a poor decision. Lashes for disobedience. Broken ribs for not being alert enough. Jaime had smiled at him, tried to cheer him up, but he knew he was pitied and despised. How could he not be? He'd escaped to the past, but that didn't change what he had been; all he could do was cover the damage and try to build a stronger person on top of it. That's what he'd been trying to do. It hadn't really worked. He'd become a hero, because he had to to save everyone. But the scared little slave was still underneath that veneer, declaring himself in every scar.

_But I'm a hero now. A hero._ It was so much easier in costume. It was so much easier to pretend that covering so much skin was an accident then.

Bart ate a few sausages (the idea of food always being available was still new to him), and smiled and joked with the others. They didn't seem to notice that anything was wrong. None of them but Jaime, whose gaze was a little too serious and concerned. He could see the damage, now; Bart couldn't hide it from him any more. He kept smiling anyway.

They ate. They laughed. They played volleyball. They accused each other of cheating. As everyone began to disperse, Jaime pulled Bart aside. "I know you don't want to talk about this," he said, "but I have to know. The plasma blast, the... the one I gave you?"

_Not the only one you gave me. _"What about it?"

"What... what happened?"

"I was too slow." Bart turned to leave.

"No, I mean why did... why did I... do that?"

"Because I was too slow."

"I don't understand."

Bart took a deep breath. "You used a wide beam to take out three runaways. I was in the way. I didn't dodge fast enough."

"You were shielding the runaways?"

"No, I was pulling a kid out of your path."

"You got that... protecting somebody else." Jaime's voice dropped. "From me."

"That won't happen."

"You're right. It won't," he said firmly. "But any scar you get in the line of duty as a hero is one to be proud of, I think."

"I wasn't a hero then."

"It sounds like you were."

* * *

_Any scar you get in the line of duty is one to be proud of._

That night, Bart undressed in front of his bedroom mirror. He ran one hand over the plasma burn. _Scar in the line of duty: protecting a child_. His hand slid down his shoulder blade and found the lashes on his back. _Food raid to keep from starving and feed the group. The one time I got caught. It didn't stop us_. Down arms, down thighs... _Distracted a guard from picking on a sick slave, took his punches instead. Cut stealing a part for the time machine. Burned building the time machine. Stabbed fighting a bully. Cut while playing dumb for guards so they wouldn't catch onto the plan to go back. _Marks that forged him into who he was, marks for protecting and defending, marks for trying to save people. Marks for stupid mistakes and bad luck, of course, but that wasn't important.

Marks that showed how weak and useless he was if he thought of himself the same way his mortal enemies did; as a slave with no value or agency of his own. Marks that only made him weak if he let them, if he looked at them from the wrong perspective.

Not limitations. Not weaknesses. The scars showed who you were.

"Bart? Dinner!"

"Coming!" Bart got dressed again, making sure his sleeves covered his upper arms. The physical wounds had to remain a secret; he couldn't reveal just what the future was like yet. But that was just a practical concern. Skin was just skin. As far as he himself went... Bart Allen had nothing to hide.


End file.
